Sunday, February 26, 2017

The Racists Even Hated Obama's Dog


We are reading Michael Tesler's Post-Racial or Most Racial: Race and Politics in the Obama Era in class.

Tesler's main finding is that the people with the most "racial resentment" strongly opposed Barack Obama - no surprise - and everything associated with him.  They didn't care about Sen. McCain or Gov. Romney until those men were the "last line of defense" against Obama.  They supported Gov. Crist, a Republican, until he hugged Obama - then his career as a Republican was over.  They liked Hillary Clinton when she was Obama's opponent in the primary, but strongly disliked her when she was his Secretary of State.

In one wonderful, though head-shaking, experiment, Tesler showed people pictures of a Portuguese water dog.  When they said it was Ted Kennedy's dog, Splash, the racially resentful rated it the way they did other Democrats' dogs.  However, when they told people the identical picture was of Barack Obama's dog, Bo, their dislike of the dog went up 20 points.

11 comments:

Fran said...

I thought that you said that the Tea Party was dead?

Gruntled said...

They have morphed into Trump voters, who are different - more nationalist, less small government.

Anonymous said...

do you consider yourself as Alt Left?

Gruntled said...

Certainly not - I am a centrist, as the title of this blog says.

Anonymous said...

In that case, it is my opinion that you are a bit out of calibration.

Barry said...

This research is correct. For many years, I was involved in retail. One of our vendors had a plush version of the Obama children's dog. On more than one occasion, I overheard a child ask a parent or grandparent if they could have it. The response was positive because it was cute, however whey they saw the label, they refused to purchase it.

Gruntled said...

Anon, can you elaborate?

Anonymous said...

Is it fair to equate centrist to moderate?

Looking back at the theme of your posts, my perception is that they are all very anti-right-anything. I would believe a true centrist (moderate) to be able to at the very least see some value in both the left and the right political ideology.

I would also perceive a true centrist to be more optimistic, not always, but mostly.

To me, you seem rather obsessed with the current conservative movement and hell bent to damn it at every opportunity.

As stated, this is just MY opinion, and by the way, I consider myself as moderate right. I voted for trump. I didn't agree with most of the Obama administration policy, but I did agree with some. I certainly didn't hate him for any reason, most certainly for his race.

Gruntled said...

As a centrist, I do see value in both liberal and conservative proposals, and often say so. For the same centrist reason, I also oppose extremism of both the left and right, and sometimes point that out.

Anonymous said...

Do you agree that your blogs of late are mostly negative toward conservative beliefs?
Do you feel obsessed with political current events?

Gruntled said...

I do follow politics closely. I think this is a virtue in a democracy, and wish more people did.

I looked at the posts from this year already, including the events of inaugurating a new president. Even in this heightened political moment, fewer than half are about politics directly.

I am worried that a growing narrow nationalism, in this country and elsewhere, will produce very bad things, including a major war.

I think liberals and conservatives both have an interest in the ordinary politics of compromise and in preventing oppression and war, and say so.